SAN FRANCISCO: Twitter has rolled out an analytics tool called the tweet activity dashboard, aimed at helping the social network’s users learn more about the impact of their tweets.

Twitter alerted users to the tool on Wednesday via a tweet from the @Twitter handle. The tweet included a link to a support page on Twitter’s website as well as an explanation of the tool, how to access and use it, and an FAQ section.

Want to know how your Tweets are performing? Check out the revamped Tweet activity dashboard: https://t.co/g6w5dsqIo0

The dashboard enables users to see how people engage with their tweets in real-time, and it compares tweet activity month-over-month and looks at how tweets trend over time. By clicking on any tweet, users can get a detailed view of the number of retweets, replies, favorites, follows, or clicks it received. Tweet metrics can also be downloaded through the tool.

Although the social network is working to roll out the tool to all users eventually, it is currently limited to users who primarily tweet in English, French, Japanese, and Spanish, and have had an account for at least two weeks.

Will McInnes, CMO of social media monitoring company Brandwatch, noted that Twitter’s new tool is beneficial for "less sophisticated, generalist" PR practitioners, but might not be the right fit for those looking for deeper insight.

"For your general day-to-day account person, an intuitive, world-class basic analytics platform is great news and their clients will equally have access to it too, as will any Twitter user," he said. "It is going to be great for getting quick snapshots, but for deep or historical analysis of social, it is not that sort of professional grade tool."

For more sophisticated users of social data, integrating the new Twitter tool into the broader social media landscape and being able to give clients a single source of "truth" is the main challenge it presents, according to McInnes.

"The tool is good news in terms of democratizing access to social data, but the benefits are really dependent on [the end-user’s needs]," he added.